Photography is a magnificent treasure from God.

The events, faces, smiles and more of Nicaragua are marinating in my mind. I haven't exactly narrowed down what I want to share of that experience yet.

As my mind has been marinating, I've finalized a layout for this site. I went back to a past facebook note which I thought was fun. I'm posting the Rules just in case you want to do it too or you just want to see the results you would get:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/).
b. Using ONLY the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3 (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php).
d. Save the image and post it on this note!

The Questions:
1. What is your name? Ashley
2. What is your favorite food? empanadas
3. What is your favorite color? tie dye
4. Favorite drink? Green Tea
5. Dream vacation? Around the world
6. Favorite hobby? travelling
7. What you want to be when you grow up? a helping hand
8. What's one thing you call valuable on this earth? friendship
9. One word to describe you? creative

& That's how the photography collage at the top came into existence.

"God doesn't wreck our plans, he just has no regard for them." - anonymous

I woke up today believing it was simply another lazy day of summer, which I've been perfecting this last week by pretending to study and watching an extreme amount of Disney channel peppered with selected shows from TLC. In order to actually study math I am in need of my graphing calculator that I let Cathlyn Leonard borrow. I headed to Westchase to meet her and get it today. I arrived in the Big Room to see her, but she was not there. I sent her a text and proceeded to search the building which is when I stumbled upon Brian Coats.

I stopped to talk to him, which is when he found out my lazy day schedule. Mr. Brown had to drop out of the Nicaragua trip and BC was offering me the spot on the trip. After making some phone calls to my parents and the travel agent, I'm all set to go minus paperwork which will be taken care of in the morning, way before my normal wake up time.

Driving home while I was cancelling plans, I realized just how crazy God is, especially with his perfect planning. I talked to Mr. Brown about this trip back in February before I finalized my summer "plans" of taking CLEP tests and going to Alaska. I definitely prayed about the trip, but didn't know how it was going to work out and just let it slide out of my mind.

Ever since I've been back from Alaska though, Nica has been on my mind a bit. I've been thinking about gallo pinto, the Nicaraguans I know and love, the mission team I travelled there with and those I've travelled to other places. And now, I'm going back to Nicaragua.

I haven't stopped smiling since I left the church with my paperwork in my passenger seat. Sam Shrauner could hear my smile in the voicemail I left her. I'm excited to say the least. Nicaragua, here I come!